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Tailored Wingbox Structures through Additive Manufacturing: a Summary

of Ongoing Research at NASA LaRC

Bret. K. Stanford and Karen M. B. Taminger

NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
USA
bret.k.stanford@nasa.gov, karen.m.taminger@nasa.gov

ABSTRACT
The use of wingbox structural design for improved performance (i.e., fuel burn reduction) of subsonic transports
is driven by two trends: reduced structural weight and increased wingspan. These two trends are in direct
competition, as the increased span will exacerbate the structural reaction to aerodynamic loading, and the
reduced structural weight will nominally weaken the aircraft’s ability to handle this response. Novel structural
configurations, enabled by recent improvements in manufacturing, may be critical toward bridging this gap.
This paper summarizes pertinent activities at the NASA Langley Research Center in terms of additive
manufacturing of metallic wing structures and substructures. Numerical design optimization activities are
summarized as well, in order to understand where on a wingbox an additively-manufactured part may be useful
and the way in which that part beneficially impacts the flight physics. The paper concludes with a discussion of
how these two research paths may be better married in order to fully integrate both the benefits and realistic
limitations of additive manufacturing and numerical structural design.

1.0 INTRODUCTION
A common goal across the aviation industry and aeronautics-centric government laboratories is for the next
generations of subsonic transport aircraft to attain significant reductions in fuel burn, emissions, and noise
pollution, relative to the current fleet of aircraft. These ambitious goals will likely only be realized with a
sustained focus and investment in new numerical design tools, experimental testing procedures, and
manufacturing processes, as applied to all components of the aircraft: fuselage, wing, engine, etc. The focus of
the current work is on novel structural solutions for the wingbox. A fuel-optimal configuration will likely utilize
a high-aspect ratio wing (for drag reduction) operating at minimum mass. As such, a key challenge is to control
the passive aeroelastic behavior of this highly-flexible system by precisely tailoring the load paths through the
wing. This design goal is not new, but recent advances in manufacturing of metallic structures may allow for
greater and more precise control of these load paths. An important question is whether these new manufacturing
tools allow for enough of a performance improvement to offset the increased manufacturing and certification
costs.

The manufacturing techniques of interest here are metal additive manufacturing (AM), which encompasses a
class of processes that can be used to design and construct parts using a layer-additive approach. AM
processes are an outgrowth of rapid prototyping processes such as stereolithography for plastics and welding
repair techniques employing laser, electron beam, or arc welding. AM offers numerous advantages, the core
of which are reduced production and material costs, reduced development and lead times, and improved
performance. AM processes developed over the past several years to directly produce structural metallic parts
include selective laser sintering and electron beam melting [1], precision metal deposition [2], direct laser
deposition processes [3], etc. The manufacturing process of interest in this work is an electron beam freeform

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fabrication (EBF3) process developed at the NASA Langley Research Center, a rapid metal deposition process
that works efficiently with a variety of weldable alloys [4]-[5]. The EBF3 process can be used to build a
complex, unitized part in a layer-additive fashion (with or without compositional gradients), although the
more immediate payoff is for use as a manufacturing process for adding details to components fabricated from
simplified castings and forgings or plate products.

The ability to build complex unitized parts via EBF3 may be used to enable highly-tuned and tailored wingbox
structures. Furthermore, it is our view that numerical design optimization is the best way to 1) understand
where on the wing such novel structures are worthwhile, 2) quantify the resulting performance improvements
versus the AM cost, and 3) understand the pertinent mechanical/dynamical/aeroelastic physics that are driving
this design benefit. A numerical model of the wing is developed at a reasonable fidelity level, and a design
optimization problem is set up to minimize structural mass and/or fuel burn under a set of constraints attached
to various load cases. A series of optimization problems may then be solved with increasingly complex
structural and material parameterizations: the simpler parameterizations represent current manufacturing
practices for metallic wingbox structures, whereas the more complex parameterizations present the extremes
of what a tool like EBF3 may offer. Comparisons of the various numerical optimization results will then help
answer the questions formulated above: where is EBF3 useful, how much benefit can be derived, and what is
driving this benefit? Literature, which considers numerical aircraft design (wings or panels) via optimal
material and thickness grading, may be found in [6]-[10]. Topology optimization may be used to design far
more complex three-dimensional parts (a solid rib web which has been replaced with a series of inter-
connected lightening holes, for example); a summary of recent applications for wing structures may be found
in [11] and [12].

The remainder of this work is organized as follows: a deeper discussion will be provided into the process
associated with EBF3, its limitations, and the sorts of parts it can produce. Detailed wingbox optimization
studies will also be discussed to highlight and quantify the use of material grading, thickness grading,
curvilinear components, and more generic topology optimization concepts. The work will conclude with a
discussion related to the challenges that will need to be addressed to bridge the gap between the current state
of EBF3 and the future ability to fabricate large-scale unitized wingbox structures using processes like EBF3
for the next generation of transports.

2.0 ELECTRON BEAM FREEFORM FABRICATION

Figure 1 shows a schematic of the primary components in an EBF3 system. The EBF3 process introduces
metal wire feedstock into a molten pool that is created and sustained using a focused electron beam in a high
vacuum environment (1x10-4 torr or lower). The EBF3 process is nearly 100% efficient in feedstock
consumption and approaches 95% efficiency in power usage. The electron beam couples effectively with any
electrically conductive material, including highly reflective alloys such as aluminum and copper. A variety of
weldable alloys can be processed using EBF3, and further development is underway to determine if non-
weldable alloys can also be deposited. The EBF3 process is capable of bulk metal deposition at deposition
rates in excess of 2500 cm3/hr (150 in3/hr) as well as finer detailed deposition at lower deposition rates with
the same piece of equipment, limited only by the positioning precision and wire feed capabilities. The
diameter of the wire feedstock is the controlling factor determining the smallest detail attainable using this
process: fine diameter wires may be used for adding fine details, and larger diameter wires can be used to
increase deposition rate for bulk deposition. EBF3 offers viable solutions to issues of deposition rate, process
efficiency, and material compatibility for insertion into the production environment.

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Figure 1: Schematic of electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) system components.

The NASA Langley Research Center has three EBF3 systems; the two smaller systems are housed in vacuum
chambers approximately 1 m x 1 m x 1 m (35.3 cubic feet) with low power (2 kW, 20 kV accelerating
voltage) electron beam guns, four-axis motion control systems, single wire feeders, and data acquisition and
control systems. A larger ground-based system is a commercially-available electron beam welder that has
been adapted for performing EBF3 process development. This system includes a 42 kW, 60 kV accelerating
voltage electron beam gun, a vacuum system, a positioning system, and dual wire feeders capable of
independent, simultaneous operation. The two wire feeders may be loaded with either a fine and a coarse wire
diameter for different feature definition, or two different alloys that may be fed simultaneously to produce
components with compositional gradients.

Figure 2 shows photographs of several parts fabricated via EBF3 using 2219 aluminum, Ti-6-4, and Inconel
718 that demonstrate the ability to program and control the process, produce parts with complex shape
transitions, fabricate parts with unsupported overhangs with and without tilting the table, and the ability to
control the process with varied wire feed angles into the molten pool. The parts include a variety of different
nozzle shapes, airfoils, attachment nodes, and a wind tunnel model, where sizes are only limited by the size of
the vacuum chamber. All of these parts have been built near-net shaped, and require a final machining to
achieve the desired surface finish (although work is being pursued to eliminate finish matching). The parts
fabricated using EBF3 have demonstrated acceptable machinability and were machined using the same
geometry representation used to fabricate the component to begin with [5]. An example of components with
compositional gradients is shown in Figure 3, for metallic stiffeners with either grading through-depth, or
grading in the plane of the stiffener.

There is a trade-off between deposition rates and feature size for materials deposited using the EBF3 process.
Additionally, higher deposition rates result in lower cooling rates that produce coarser microstructures. The
tensile properties for EBF3-deposited 2219 Al and Ti-6-4 are very consistent over a wide range of processing
conditions, indicating that the tensile properties are not statistically affected by the variations within the
microstructures obtained during higher versus lower heat input processing conditions. Thus, the range in
microstructures documented for 2219 Al and Ti-6-4 appears to be small enough that it does not have a
significant impact on the bulk tensile properties of the EBF3-deposited materials. Note, however, that 2219 Al
and Ti-6-4 have relatively simple alloy chemistries compared to many conventional alloys. It is possible that

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this simplicity in composition translates to relative insensitivity to mechanical properties or microstructural

variations. More work is required to characterize the range of microstructures and mechanical properties for
other engineering alloys. Additional work is also required to examine other mechanical properties such as
fatigue, fracture, and crack propagation to fully characterize any potential impact of the microstructural
differences for all of these materials.

Figure 2: Examples of parts fabricated at NASA Langley using the EBF3 process. (a) Ti-6-4 wind
tunnel model; (b) 2219 Al mixer nozzle; (c) thin-walled 2219 Al mixer nozzle; (d) Ti-6-4 truss node with
flat attachment surface; (e) Ti-6-4 inlet duct; (f) 2219 Al airfoil; (g) Ti-6-4 guy wire fitting; (h) 2139 Al
curvilinear stiffeners deposited onto skin; (i) Inconel 718 rocket nozzle.

Figure 3: Example of blended compositional gradients through a metallic stiffener cross-sections: (a)
Cu-Ni gradient within the stiffener plane; (b) Cu-Ni gradient through the stiffener depth; (c) 2219 Al-
2195 Al-Li alternating layers; (d) 2219 Al-2195 Al-Li continuous gradient through the stiffener depth.

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3.0 NUMERICAL OPTIMIZATION OF METALLIC WINGBOX STRUCTURES

A key question of interest in this work is whether the AM EBF3 technology demonstrated in Figure 2 and
Figure 3 can be used to construct the components of a large scale wingbox for transport aircraft. The first
portion of this question, considered in this section, is whether AM is beneficial on purely physical grounds
(i.e., whether a stiffener with material grading is useful for structural/aeroelastic response). If a physical basis
is found lacking, then other aspects of this issue (manufacturing cost, scalability, certification: all discussed in
the next section) are immaterial. All numerical examples shown in this section are demonstrated on the
Common Research Model (CRM) [13], a generic transport configuration with a standard
rib/spar/stiffener/skin semimonocoque wingbox.

3.1 Thickness and Material Grading Optimization

Numerical optimization involves minimizing the structural mass of the wingbox, subject to stress, buckling, and
flutter constraints spread across a series of trimmed load cases. The structural parameterization (i.e., design
variables) is dictated by the manufacturing process of interest. For example, the upper and lower wing skins
may be divided into panel subcomponents, and the optimizer allowed to individually optimize the thickness of
each panel. The panels in this case are delineated by ribs and stringers. An optimal result for such a scenario is
shown in Figure 4, where peak thicknesses occur near the trailing edge wing break (where the stresses are
highest) and taper to the lower bound at the tip where stresses are very low. This result does not envision AM,
but does serve as a baseline for a case that could utilize EBF3. This latter case, shown in Figure 5, allows for
detailed spatial variations in thickness within each panel. The number of design variables in Figure 5 is orders of
magnitude higher than in Figure 4, but otherwise the optimization problem is the same, and so the results can be
directly compared.

Figure 4: Optimal patchwise thickness distribution of the wing skins.

Global thickness patterns of the spatially-detailed case align with the patchwise case in Figure 4, but substantial
local variations are evident, clearly driven by panel buckling. Many of the localized thickness design variables
in Figure 5 are much thicker than in the baseline. These thicker members provide a reduction in wing mass over
the baseline, however, by providing the optimizer with greater control over the local load paths and stress
concentrations, and allowing for thinner members elsewhere through the skins. In summary, the optimal
structural mass (objective function) of the case in Figure 5 is 8.6% lighter than the patchwise case in Figure 4, an
improvement enabled by AM.

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Figure 5: Optimal thickness distribution of the wing skins when detailed spatial variations are allowed.

Similar ideas may be explored for material grading. First, the result of Figure 5, an all-aluminum wing box, is
used as a baseline. Then a subsequent optimization is constructed where the optimizer is allowed to control the
material distribution, in addition to controlling a spatially-detailed thickness distribution. The material fraction is
allowed to continuously vary between zero (100% aluminum, as in Figure 5) and one (100% titanium).
Titanium is nearly twice the density of aluminum, but also has 65% higher stiffness. Although contrary to the
stated optimization goal of minimized structural mass, the optimizer may still be enticed to use titanium instead
of aluminum in order to exploit an increase in local stiffness, which may allow for greater reduction in mass
elsewhere. The optimal result is shown in Figure 6: this design is largely composed of aluminum, but pockets of
titanium are seen in the rear spar and the lower skins. The optimizer never uses 100% titanium, as this would be
too heavy: peak material fractions of 32% are seen in the lower skin. Relative to the all-aluminum case in Figure
5, the graded design has a wing mass that is 3.6% lower.

Figure 6: Optimal material fraction distribution: a value of 1 is 100% titanium; a value of 0 is 100%
aluminum.

3.2 Topology Optimization

The results in section 3.1 considered only altering the thickness and material distribution throughout the wingbox
components (predominately in the skins). This section considers a situation where the topology inside the
wingbox itself may be optimized. Rather than a series of straight ribs and stiffeners (as used in Figure 6 for

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example), these members may be bent into curvilinear paths, as demonstrated in Figure 7. EBF3 could certainly
be used to fabricate such curved members (as shown in Figure 2h) directly onto the skins and spars. Numerical
optimization proceeds in a similar manner to that described above: the topology is first optimized (to minimize
structural mass) using only straight ribs and stiffeners. This case is used to baseline a second case, with more
design variables but the same objective and constraints, where the optimizer is allowed to utilize curved rib and
stiffener paths. Preliminary results indicate a 1.2% weight reduction when curved members are utilized in place
of straight members [14].

Figure 7: Sample straight (left) and curvilinear (right) stiffener/rib web components.

A second topology optimization idea would be to replace the solid web members of Figure 7 (ribs and stiffeners)
with a lighter-weight concept. One could introduce lightening holes into these webs, for example, and if the
amount of material removed from the webs by the optimizer is relatively large, then an AM technique like EBF3
would again be a reasonable choice. An example of this is shown in Figure 8, where the CRM wingbox skins
are preseeded with straight, run-out blade stringers, and a topology optimizer is allowed to introduce lightening
holes into the webs of these stringers in an effort to minimize structural mass (but again still meet certain stress
and buckling constraints attached to a series of load cases). This exercise is conducted for both the upper and
lower skin stringers (from root to tip), but only the midspan section of the upper skins is shown in Figure 8, in
order to fully visualize the finely-detailed topologies.

As speculated above, the optimizer does remove the majority of the material from each web, leaving behind a
series of topologies largely characterized by trapezoidal truss structures (where the long edge of the trapezoid is
attached to the skins) with diagonal cross-bracing. Some of the stiffeners are removed entirely, namely those
closest to the leading edge and the trailing edge of the wingbox in Figure 8. In order to baseline this topology, a
second, simpler, optimization case is run, where the optimizer is forced to only allow solid full-depth stiffeners
(i.e., no lightening holes). As above, this simpler baselining case is reflective of current practices for aircraft
structures, and would not depend upon novel AM processes. The optimal result in Figure 8 is 7.4% lighter than
this simpler baseline case, again highlighting the efficacy of topologically-optimized wingbox structures.

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Figure 8: Topologically-optimized stiffener webs along the upper skin, near midspan.

A third type of wingbox topology optimization would involve abandoning the conventional rib-spar-stiffener
concept that defines the results in Figure 7 and Figure 8, and instead allow the optimizer to generate complex
three-dimensional reinforcement structures. Rather than the two-dimensional pixelated parameterization of
Figure 8 (where a shell element pixel can be driven by the topology optimizer to be either solid or void), here the
wingbox is populated with a large number of voxel brick elements, where each may be solid or void. The
resulting optimal topology may resemble conventional components such as ribs, spars, and stiffeners, or may
not, depending on the various physical metrics driving the design. This category of numerical design is
substantially more complex and expensive than the previous two, owing to the large number of elements needed.
The voxelated representation also makes properly baselining the optimal topologies (ideally a baseline would be
a conventional rib/spar/stiffener layout) difficult. This is a significant challenge for current design, optimization,
and analysis tools, but may become more realistic as tools and computational power improve. The interested
reader is referred to [15] for preliminary results in this area.

4.0 MANUFACTURING LIMITATION CONSIDERATIONS DURING DESIGN

Several numerical wingbox design optimization exercises have been presented in the previous section; the
successful implementation of each is hypothetically dependent upon AM schemes such as EBF3. Care has been
taken, for each case, to baseline each optimization result against a simpler comparative result, which is reflective
of standard structural practices and not dependent on novel manufacturing. The structural mass reductions
demonstrated by these numerical exercises are in some cases very moderate (1.2% reduction from curvilinear
ribs/stiffeners, versus straight members), and in some cases more successful (8.6% reductions from finely-
detailed spatial skin thickness variations, versus patchwise thickness trends). Many of these design strategies
need not be exclusive (i.e., a curved stiffener with material grading), but such synergies have not been explored
here.

The structural mass reductions are important, as these could in theory be translated into manufacturing and/or
operational cost (the latter through a weight versus fuel burn trade-off), and this in turn used to understand
whether a given additively-manufactured part can “buy its way onto the airplane.” No effort is made here to

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quantify this trade-off, though it is of course understood that large-scale fabrication of structures via large-scale
AM processes like EBF3 is very expensive (though this cost can be expected to decrease with time) and largely
unproven. This is particularly true for the complex topologically-optimized structures, such as in Figure 8. An
interesting and perhaps necessary extension to the numerical optimization efforts shown here is the introduction
of a cost model into the design optimization process, one which has been trained to correlate structural and/or
topological feature complexity with an estimated EBF3 manufacturing cost. Such a model, in conjunction with
the implementation of a constraint that limits the total manufacturing cost, would force an optimizer to only
utilize rich structural features (i.e., an aggressive spatial material grading, or a topological part with complex
truss connectivity) in areas of the wingbox with the most to gain in terms of structural and aeroelastic response.
In other areas of the wing where there is less to be gained from such features, the optimizer would revert to
conventional structural designs, which don’t rely on AM.

A second area of improvement in the numerical work considered here would be the inclusion of manufacturing
constraints during the optimization process. The inclusion of such constraints would ensure that, at least,
inefficient manual design adjustment can be avoided between the numerical design phase and the experimental
manufacturing phase, and at most, that the numerical optimizer does not settle on a design that cannot be built to
specifications. These constraints are fairly straight-forward for the case of thickness and material grading (i.e.,
limiting the spatial derivative of the grading contours to that which can be reasonably achieved with EBF3), but
are more complex for topology optimization. Topology manufacturing constraints have been an active area of
research (see [16], for example), in terms of overhang constraints, minimum part size and/or canal depth, part
orientation, etc., but no work has been done, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, for full-scale airframe
structures.

5.0 CONCLUSIONS
This paper has provided a summary of current research activities at the NASA Langley Research Center in the
fields of AM (namely the EBF3 process) and numerical wingbox structural/aeroelastic optimization. The
portions of the paper summarizing EBF3 activities essentially demonstrates a capability that is wholly capable of
producing meter-scale metallic structures, with or without material grading. The latter portions of the paper,
summarizing the numerical optimization work, envisions the ways in which these EBF3 techniques may be
extended to larger-scale transport wingbox structures, in order to produce lighter-weight wings that can still
withstand the required loads. Some of these manufacturing methods are found, via numerical optimization, to
represent only a moderate improvement over standard manufacturing procedures (curved ribs versus standard
straight ribs, for example), whereas other techniques are more successful (continuously graded skin thicknesses).

The gap between the two research fields summarized here is wide; various strategies that may help bridge this
gap have been proposed, namely the inclusion of manufacturing cost and manufacturing limitation constraints
during the design optimization process. Manufacturing cost constraints, which have not received much attention
in the current literature, may be particularly adept at enabling situations where EBF3 is effectively utilized for
transport wingbox design. A cost constraint will force a numerical optimizer to only use EBF3 in areas of the
wingbox that can critically benefit from complex structural features (and use standard, though optimal,
manufacturing practices elsewhere), and will therefore naturally limit the acreage of the resulting additively
manufactured parts closer to the capabilities of current EBF3 practices.

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6.0 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work is funded by the NASA Advanced Air Transport Technologies project.

7.0 REFERENCES
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[8] Marzocca, P., Fazelzadeh, S., Hosseini, M., “A Review of Nonlinear Aero-Thermo-Elasticity of
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[9] Dunning, P., Stanford, B., Kim, H., Jutte, C., “Aeroelastic Tailoring of a Plate Wing with Functionally
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[10] Stanford, B., Jutte, C., Wieseman, C., “Trim and Structural Optimization of Subsonic Transport Wings
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[11] Deaton, J., Grandhi, R., “A Survey of Structural and Multidisciplinary Continuum Topology
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[13] Vassberg, J., DeHaan, M., Rivers, S., Wahls, R., “Development of a Common Research Model for Applied
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2008.

[14] Stanford, B., Jutte, C., Coker, C., “Sizing and Layout Design of an Aeroelastic Wingbox through Nested
Optimization,” AIAA SciTech Forum, Kissimmee, Florida, January 8-12, 2018.

[15] Dunning, P., Stanford, B., Kim, H., “Coupled Aerostructural Topology Optimization using a Level Set
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[16] Gaynor, A., Guest, J., “Topology Optimization Considering Overhang Constraints: Eliminating Sacrificial
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Optimization, Vol. 54, No. 5, pp. 1157-1172, 2016.

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